Restricted Jurisdiction

A restricted jurisdiction is a country whose residents a broker will not accept, or will accept only through one particular entity. The list is driven by sanctions, by local law that makes soliciting residents an offence, and by the firm's own risk appetite — the United States, Japan, Canada and Belgium sit on most retail broker lists for regulatory rather than commercial reasons. It matters more than the small print suggests. Residency is verified at onboarding against your documents and frequently re-checked against your IP address and payment instrument, so a mismatch surfacing later — after a move, or because the account was opened on an old address — can hold withdrawals until the file is corrected or the account closed. Using a VPN to defeat a geo-block breaches the client agreement and is the cleanest ground a firm has for voiding a trade.